Johnnie Gilmore

Johnnie Gilmore is a bass player and songwriter from Boston, MA. Though he has loved and played music nearly all his life (starting with classical piano lessons in elementary school), it became his main passion when he first picked up the electric bass at 15. Since then, Johnnie has studied with Jesse Williams, Bob Sinicrope, Noah Baerman, and Nilson Matta, and gigged with rock bands, jam bands, singer-songwriters, jazz ensembles, funk/soul revues, traditional Balkan groups, and seven musical theater pits (including “Bat Boy: The Musical,” for which he doubled as Music Director), while also performing frequently as a solo bassist. Music has taken Johnnie to all corners of the United States — most recently to Los Angeles, where he currently lives — and even abroad, with a tour of South Africa as a high school junior and a set at Hong Kong’s Freespace Happening festival as a college senior.

As a solo player and songwriter, Johnnie aspires to tell interesting stories with a focus on melody in his arrangements, following the example of instrumentalists like Victor Wooten, Jaco Pastorius, Tommy Emmanuel, Chet Atkins, and Jon Gomm. (Even his most technically demanding songs can still be sung in the shower!) His music is also inspired by The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Phish, Steely Dan, and James Taylor, among other influences.

Johnnie holds a B.A. in Music from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT), where he won the Gwen Livingston Pekora prize for excellence in music composition as a senior. In 2018, he relocated to Los Angeles where he focuses on session work and his ever-expanding understanding and command of the vocabulary of the electric bass.